I have an anonymous request for a “Good Shit vs. Shit to Avoid” list:
Like many of us, I cope with things by reading about them, and I love finding a book about someone who has problems similar to mine and is able to thrive. I was recently diagnosed with a chronic condition that will almost certainly affect the rest of my life. It’s not fatal, and it’s not degenerative, but it is likely to lead to some level of physical disability in the future.
I am thus wondering about books with heroines who are physically disabled. I know there are books with deaf/Deaf heroines (I thoroughly enjoyed Tessa Dare’s Three Nights with a Scoundrel), but I’m primarily interested in reading about women with physical limitations—damaged legs, missing arms, confined to a wheelchair, suffering from multiple sclerosis, etc. One-eyed race car drivers need not apply.
There are heroes with war wounds, but I’ve encountered very few heroines with similar disabilities. My taste is kind of narrow—I love Julia Quinn, Tessa Dare, Loretta Chase, and most Lisa Kleypas for historicals (I have read Seduce Me at Sunrise, btw, and I’m just thinking I’ll go back and reread Win’s story…). I love Victoria Dahl (historicals and contemp), Jenny Crusie, and Nora Roberts. I much prefer fluff to angst, and I’m not really all that into paranormal romance, though I’m always willing to give things a shot.
I thought maybe the Bitchery could help me out here.
My first thought is Whisper Falls by Toni Blake, which features a heroine with Crohn’s Disease, among the Most Unsexy Chronic Ailments Ever, who doesn’t get better magically by the end of the book.
But I don’t recall any heroines with chronic, potentially debilitating problems like MS or fibromyalgia, for example. Do you know of any?
There is a series of thrillers by Meg Gardiner in which the heroine, Evan Delaney, is in love with a man who is paraplegic after a car crash. As the series progresses, their relationship develops and changes, and quite a bit of that change is because of his injuries. The descriptions of his difficulties in using a wheelchair, and in adjusting to other people’s reactions to him, seemed well done to me. The couple does figure out together how to have sex, and they do struggle over the course of several books to discover how to treat each other equally rather than caregiver-care receiver. Thoughtful and well-written books as well as good thrillers, imho.
@jivediva, have you read Sweetblood by Pete Hautman? It’s a YA, and the main character has diabetes and is fascinated by vampires, although it’s not a paranormal.
Also, Shadows at Midnight by Elizabeth Jennings is a romantic suspense with a heroine who was caught in an explosion and has suffered some low-grade brain damage along with the physical injuries.
I disagree. The idea that she can go from needing a temporary Ileostimy bag, to a permanent Ileositmy bag due to the majority of her colon needing to be taken out, then walking down the street with the major asshole of the story does not say realistic to someone with Crohn’s, in my honest opinion. I was looking for something honest in the ending. True, her seclusion and ill fated relationships with immature buttholes, that see her as damaged goods, feels true enough. But a stroll down the street after that surgery does not say ‘real’ to me. To me, that says the fairies did something to lessen her burden. Why else would the ‘consulting fairies’ go into her room at the hospital and then *POOF* she’s good to go for a nice walk?
That was the most stubborn bold tag. All fixed. Sorry about that.
@shehasathree: I know Chron’s is potentially debilitating and chronic. I’m sorry my comparison in the entry didn’t make that clear.
Also: re: the idea of “being a burden:” one of the things that struck me as terribly painful and lifelike about Whisper Falls was the scenes in which the heroine thinks about how much her life has changed before Chron’s/after Chron’s. Before she had a job, lived farther away from home, etc. After, she had to resign her job because she missed too much work and decided she needed to be closer to her parents should she need daily visits or care, so she moved back to Destiny.
She hated the changes but knew they were necessary and struggled against feeling like a burden to them, and becoming depressed as a result. This sounds rather odd, but I can’t think of a better way to put this: I had respect for the heroine because of the way she worked through and described that struggle.
I mostly avoid books with disabled characters. I almost missed out on LMB because so many folks told me I should read her.
The key to doing it right for me is people don’t “overcome” they get around, wade through,and sometime lie down and let the hard stuff steam roll over them.[ this last is not failure it’s just life.] The reason I think romance fails so often is because of the failure to redefine HEA.
I want the couple to be stronger and happier together, but if I’m left with the impression that love provides a cure all I feel cheated.
As a person living with multiple chronic health conditions, including Crohn’s Disease, what really chaps my ass – HA! Crohn’s Disease in-joke! – about the portrayal of chronically ill heroines or heroes in some of the books I”ve read is that the chronically ill character tends to be portrayed as either a) wholly physically/emotionally weak, or b) as someone who has Saintly Martyr Syndrome, an unfortunately dominant trope found in media portrayals of diseases or illnesses.
Saintly Martyr Syndrome is unrealistic, infantilizing, and so, so limiting.
@miz_geek and FD – I’ve finished SEALed with a Kiss and I enjoyed it. I thought the Celiac stuff was well done and it felt real to me. One more reason to be glad I read SBTB
@ NTE – I agree about Love in the Afternoon – I love, love that book. As someone with PTSD, this book really resonated with me, in spite of the rosy ending – it’s unrealism that I can live with.
The other book with characters with PTSD that resonated that well with me is All Night Long by JAK – both h/h have ptsd. I related to the heroine more than the hero, but I really love the book (in spite of it being a romantic suspense with a plot involving murder and incest – things I usually avoid in my romance)
I have read a lot of others with ptsd, and they don’t usually grab me. PTSD is one of those things that varys from person to person, so ymmv
Thanks SB Sarah,
Don’t worry about the Crohnies being insulted about any jokes. Let’s face it, we deal a lot in potty humor. Even my colo-rectal surgeon calls me one of his “half-assed friends”.
And thank you for clarifying the difference between typical Disability Romances and Whisper Falls. The description of before and after issues when a chronic disease/ illness is present in one of the main characters is important to me, and unfortunately it is generally disregarded as important in many of the Disability Romances I have read. I need to see how someone else works through those issues to really believe in the disabled character. I don’t know, maybe it’s just a personal necessity for me in these books, but I find that the lack of these struggles being covered is enough to dump me out of the story.
Why include a disabled or ill character if the struggles (past, present, and future) associated with the illness are disregarded and treated as unnecessary in terms of back-story or to the HEA? The whole fragile caricature of being “ill” is insulting. Illness, in my experience, makes you a hell of a lot stronger; especially in character. To dismiss this aspect of chronic illness/disease is to limit the depth of the character.
Susan Andersen’s EXPOSURE had a Sheriff hero who was an upper extremity amputee. I read it so long ago, I can’t remember much except it got too precocious with the heroine’s daughter and that gets on my nerves.
Reversing Over Liberace, by Jane Lovering, has a hero with Cerebral Palsy.
I remember reading a book years ago where the heroine had MS and the hero was a high school football coach. Name and author completely gone from my head, though.
There’s a Harlequin M&B by Lucy Gordon (Googling tells me it’s The Italian’s Wife by Sunset) where the heroine is involved in an accident (I want to say a light plane crash) and sustains some sort of heart damage. The doctors give her 10 years to live or some similar timeline and the hero says “I’m signing up anyway” It’s part of a series (the Rinuccis) featuring six traditionally hot and hunky Italian brothers/half-brothers/step-brothers.
A subject close to home for me, as well.
I haven’t had a chance to read thru all the other posts, so forgive me if these are repeats:
—Stolen Moments by Barbara J. Fisher (SLE)
—Day Into Night by Sandra Canfield (RA)
Eileen Wilks (one of my autobuy authors before she began writing paranormals) had one called MEETING AT MIDNIGHT in which the woman is just recently postoperative for breast cancer, and doesn’t know how things will turn out. And it stays that way—by the end of the book she still doesn’t know how her life will play out – short, long, whatever.
Wilks also wrote a suspense in which the woman has a chronic limp (hip nerve damage) due to a car accident as a teenager and uses a cane (I believe this one is JUST A LITTLE BIT MARRIED. Dumb title, fun book). The heroine does not get over her limp due to Twue Lurrve.
This is more on the paranormal than the romance side but I’m loving Hellwatch:
http://www.amazon.com/Hellwatch-Pilot-Episode-Season-ebook/dp/B005U3UYOY/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1321454874&sr=1-1
There’s a sneak peak at the Kindle store.
It stars a disabled Demon Hunter. The author, Larime Taylor, is himself a disabled artist.
http://larimetaylor.com/
I just read Defender by Catherine Mann last night, and I remembered this post from last week, so I want to add this book to the list. The heroine is status post kidney transplant
I just finished “Shattered Dreams” (much more angsty title than necessary) by Laura Landon. The heroine is a spinsterly 28 or so, disabled in an accident when she was younger and walks with a cane. Despite being single, she runs her family’s estate with much success and is a fantastic horsewoman, which is how she meets the hero. There’s a bit of overprotectiveness on her family’s part, but we find out later that it’s (mostly) not because they think she’s a delicate flower. Her brothers inadvertently caused her accident, and they are still filled with guilt. (Her sisters are pitying of her single state, but they’re also portrayed as being more prissy. She is closer to her brothers.)
The hero helps the heroine realize that she can do things she didn’t think she could, but I don’t think it’s handled in a patronizing way, especially since the first time we meet her she is portrayed as strong and powerful. Basically, the moral of the story is that she’s been even more successful with her disability than without—if she hadn’t been disabled, she likely wouldn’t have taken on the estate responsibilities or been allowed to go riding so recklessly—but many of the limitations she felt were her own fault, and in trying to support her decisions her family didn’t question it.
I’m so excited there is a romance with a heroine with Crohn’s. I have Crohn’s and there is nothing romantic or sexy about it. I’ve often thought that it was the anti-romance affliction.
Alison – I have ptsd too, and I’d also like to read more stories with women with ptsd (but only if they’re well done). I can think of only two romances where the heroine has ptsd – and in both cases the hero also has it. Huh. Didn’t realize that before.
I mentioned All Night Long by JAK up-thread. The heroine has ptsd from childhood trauma, not from the line of duty (think she witnessed her parents’ murder or came home to find them both dead)